


War Paint

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Romance, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-03 04:51:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1731827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It was small, slim, about the length of her hand; the leather cover was soft, the sewn-in binding was crisp, and the thick vellum pages were empty. 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' was printed in ancient, flaking gold leaf across the front.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He had been a Slytherin, a prefect, and head boy in 1944.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She had checked.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>[ ALTERNATIVELY - Hermione finds Tom Riddle's diary, but not everything is different. ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

* * *

 

**_(September 14, 1992)_ **

 

She had been back at Hogwarts for two whole weeks before she found the time to investigate the mysterious black book.

It was small, slim, about the length of her hand; the leather cover was soft, the sewn-in binding was crisp, and the thick vellum pages were empty. _Tom Marvolo Riddle_ was printed in ancient, flaking gold leaf across the front.

He had been a Slytherin, a prefect, and head boy in 1944.

She had checked.

 

* * *

 

_"Madam Pince,” she asked, voice light, “do you happen to know of any books that focus on the subject of—well, of **cursed** books?”_

_The librarian frowned._ _“If you’re trying to imply, Miss Granger, that any of **my** books are **cursed** —”_

_“Oh, no, of course not,” Hermione hastened to interject. “I was only **curious** , you see, if there were any curses that could be…hidden. In books, specifically. Perhaps in the Restricted Section? I’m rather certain that Professor McGonagall would furnish a permission slip if you would be kind enough to point me in the right direction.”_

 

* * *

 

**_(September 21, 1992)_ **

 

She had found nothing.

A seemingly endless list of revealing spells had done absolutely no revealing to speak of, and there had been no anecdotal evidence, no historical context, to lend any credence to her suspicions. All she had was a _feeling_ —sharp and sure, deep in her gut—that this book was not what it appeared to be.

It was as if it was _alive_ , which was preposterous, but she refused to discount the way it seemed to beckon to her as it sat on her desk, warm and sweet and oddly, eerily _friendly_ —the way her fingertips tingled with a sudden, inexplicable urge to pick up a quill whenever she traced them down its spine.

It wanted to be talked to.

It wanted to be written in.

She just could not fathom _why_.

 

* * *

 

_“I’ve drawn up study schedules for the two of you,” she informed Ron and Harry at breakfast. “You really shouldn’t be leaving all your work till the last minute—it will only stress you out.”_

_Ron took a large bite out of a cranberry-orange muffin, chewing vigorously as he rolled his eyes._ _“Great,” he muttered, glancing at the color-coded calendar she set in front of him. “Just what I wanted. Another **schedule**.”_

_Harry forced a smile._ _“Thanks, Hermione,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “This looks—efficient.”_

_She beamed, even as she felt a rapid flash of irritation—there for a moment, and gone the very next._

 

* * *

 

**_(October 1, 1992)_ **

 

She gives in on a Thursday, concluding that her only hope of discovering the book’s secrets is to interact with it. She reasons that it’s a _book_ , that it can’t very well _hurt her_ —and sits down at her desk.

 **Hello** _,_ she writes in neat block letters, embarrassment and determination waging war inside her head, because, _really_ —what did she think was going to happen? **My name is Hermione**.

She watches, expectant, as the words linger and set on the page—but then they fade, ink dissipating, _disappearing_ , and new text appears in slightly uneven, spider-thin script—

Hello, Hermione, she reads, brow furrowed, my name is Tom. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

Her mouth falls open—

And she slams the book shut.

 

* * *

 

_"Why do you have to antagonize Malfoy like that, Harry?” she asked, picking up a dull yellow sponge and squeezing out the excess water. “You knew Snape was going to find out.”_

_Harry scowled and turned away from the trophy case. "_ _He’s a git,” he said. “You heard what he said about you and Ron—”_

_She sighed. "_ _Yes,” she said patiently, scrubbing at the glass, “and Lockhart was rather quick to take points, in case you forgot. But you shouldn’t have—”_ _She broke off._

_“Hermione?”_

_She cocked her head to the side, staring at the name on the plaque._ _“ **Special Services to the School** ,” she recited, tone skeptical. “What do you think that means, Harry?”_

_He peered into cabinet._ _“Dunno,” he shrugged. “Who’s Tom Riddle?”_

_She pursed her lips._ _“That’s a very good question.”_

 

* * *

 

**_(November 14, 1992)_ **

 

She ignores the book for well over a month before deciding to try again.

 **I have a few questions for you, Tom,** she begins, crossing her ankles beneath her chair.

There you are, he writes back. Thought you might’ve gotten scared.

She wrinkles her nose.  **Why would I have been scared?**

Well, meeting like this is awfully strange, he replies. But I’m harmless, I promise.

Something like unease prickles at her skin.

You said you have questions?

She hesitates before answering.  **Yes. How old are you?**

Sixteen, but I’ve been stuck in here for a rather long time, so I feel a lot older.

She chews on the end of her pen.  **Stuck? How do you mean?**

His response takes longer this time. I was a bit too ambitious and mucked about with the wrong book in the library, is the short of it. Next thing I knew, I had become a…shade, I suppose. Like a ghost.

She arches an eyebrow.  **Was this book in the Restricted Section?**

Yes.

**Sounds like Dark magic,** she observes pointedly.

Oh, it was, he says. But don’t worry, Hermione—I learned my lesson.

 

* * *

 

_Tom Marvolo Riddle was easy to talk to—he was charming and funny and always responded to her with alacrity, imparting wisdom and wit in equal measure._

_She should have been desirous of his friendship._

_She should have craved his attention, if not his affection._

_She should have adored him—every aspect of his character was practically preternaturally perfect, after all—and yet— **and yet**_ —

_She did not trust it._

_She did not trust **him**._

_She avoided any and all discussions that might have linked her to Harry, to Ron, to the Weasleys or to Dumbledore or even to her own parents; she leafed through yearbooks, wrote to the Ministry for public records, searched tirelessly for an answer about who, exactly, Tom Riddle had become._

_He had graduated from Hogwarts in 1945._

_He had applied for the Defense Against the Dark Arts teaching position._

_He had taken an unlikely job—menial in nature—at a shop in Knockturn Alley._

_And then he had vanished._

 

* * *

 

**_(April 19, 1993)_ **

 

He broaches the subject of her reticence on a Monday.

You don’t like me very much, do you?

She stares at her inkwell, brass hinges locked open, rippling liquid surface all reflective charcoal swirls on honey-thick obsidian—

 **I don’t know you,** she writes back warily. **You’re a stranger.**

We’ve been talking for months .

 **Yes,** she concedes, **but you’re…evasive. You manage to say quite a lot without saying anything at all.**

Several minutes pass before he responds; she counts them, second by second, studies her unpolished fingernails and follows the spangled silver hands on her wristwatch.

How old are you, Hermione?

Perturbed—and unable to articulate _why_ —she glances furtively around the nearly empty common room.  **Thirteen** , she replies. **I’ll be fourteen in September. Why?**

You seem older. Can I ask you where you found my diary? I feel a bit silly for not inquiring sooner.

She settles back into a crimson velvet armchair; she curls her feet up and under her legs, reaches for a tartan wool blanket, and lays it across her thighs. She thinks. She dismisses the idea of lying. She bites her lip. She _thinks_. She responds.

**Someone dropped it in my bag. During a rather ridiculous altercation between two grown men in a bookshop. I think I know who it was—not a lot of suspects if it was intentional, which I emphatically believe it was—and that’s actually why you might have thought that I was being purposefully distant. It’s simple, though: I cannot begin to understand his motives—the man who gave me your diary, I mean—until I begin to understand what you are and what you can do. Does that make sense?**

She holds her breath.

Very clever of you to be cautious, Hermione. I think, if you gave me a chance, that we might be able to become quite good friends.

She uses the feathered tip of her quill to scratch at her ankle.  **You want to be friends** , she writes, skeptical. **You currently reside on an impossible plane of existence, and you want to be friends.**

Very much so, he replies quickly.  If we were friends, you might be more inclined to help me figure out how to leave this ‘impossible plane of existence’—and I suspect, Hermione, that if anyone could do it, it would be you. 

She feels a thrill of— _something_ slip between the notches of her spine, electric and anxious, excitable and curious.  **You do realize that you’ll have to be a lot more forthcoming with information about who you are and what you were really doing if I agree to help you.**

His handwriting is messy as he responds—

Consider me an open book.

 

* * *

 

_She’d had to beg McGonagall to give her access to the large, dusty tome that Tom had finally divulged the name of— **‘Secrets of the Darkest Art’** —and she could barely focus on her conversations with Harry and Ron and Neville as the Hogwarts Express barreled down the train tracks and straight through the Scottish countryside._

_“You won’t be around for the summer, then?” Ron asked, tearing open the package of his chocolate frog._

_“No,” she replied, apologetic. “Sorry. Mum and Dad are taking me to Prague for the rest of June and most of July, and then—well, I’ve got a project, actually.”_

_Harry pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose._ _“A project? For school?”_

_“Blimey, ‘Mione,” Ron interjected, spewing crumbs over his lap. “You’re doing extra schoolwork over the holiday? **Why**?”_

_She blushed madly._ _“I—it’s **interesting** , Ronald,” she said. “There are so many facets of modern magical theory that are either misunderstood or—or misrepresented entirely, and I’ve only recently come across something rather extraordinary that really merits further research—”_

_“Ah, damn it, Harry, I got Bathilda Bagshot **again** ,” Ron groaned, holding up his chocolate frog card._

_Harry barked out a laugh as she clenched her jaw._

 

* * *

 

**_(August 2, 1993)_ **

 

She realizes what he did after she reads about horcruxes. She asks him bluntly—

**Who did you kill?**

Her muscles are taut and shaky, like harp strings plucked into a furious vibrato; her handwriting is barely legible.

It isn’t that simple, he responds instantly.

**Seems simple enough. Tom Riddle killed someone innocent, split his soul in half, and made you. You’re a horcrux.**

Yes, he confirms, all of that is true. But it wasn’t intentional, Hermione. Can I show you?

She gapes at the diary.  **You’re a literal figment of the vilest, most loathsome form of Dark magic to ever exist. Why would I—**

Her pen is abruptly jerked away, as if by an invisible hand, and his writing begins to frenetically fill the rest of the page.

Why do you think I told you the name of that book, Hermione? I wasn’t trying to _hide_ anything from you. I thought that you were rational and intelligent and open-minded; I thought that you would ask me for an explanation, at the very least, before declaring war on my past and demanding answers to questions that you don’t even know enough about the subject to properly ask. 

An angry, doubtful flush creeps up the back of her neck.  **You can’t _unintentionally_ make a horcrux. It isn’t possible. Intent and force of will are significant components of magic—your soul didn’t trip down the stairs and break itself into pieces. You did it on purpose.**

How much do you know about the Chamber of Secrets?

Her eyebrows snap up, almost to her hairline.  **It’s a myth.**

No, Hermione. It isn’t.

She swears that she can feel him smile—grimly, smugly, darkly—right through the pages of the book.

 

* * *

 

_She turned fourteen, and started to notice Ron._

_She noticed the pale, light-brown freckles that dusted his jawline and the lean, wiry strength of limbs that he had yet to completely grow into; she noticed that he had broad shoulders, even if they were still a bit round, and gorgeous, pastel-blue eyes that were always bright, always laughing, always wide with awe when she said something he didn’t quite understand._

_It was inconvenient._

_It was distracting._

_It was mortifying, too, especially when she had to watch his ears glow red and his speech turn incoherent after Pansy Parkinson began to wear her skirts two inches too short._

_She ignored the situation, ignored the confusing tangle of feelings—jealousy, despair, and ridiculous, outrageous insecurity—and woke up early, ate breakfast alone, took a long, lonely walk through the castle—until she found herself outside of an empty girls’ lavatory in a dead-end hallway off of the largely unused second floor._

_She hadn’t known there was a ghost there._

 

* * *

 

**_(February 19, 1994)_ **

 

It’s snowing when she musters up the courage to talk to Tom Riddle about Myrtle.

 **I know who you killed** , she writes.

Then you also know that it was an accident.

**I fail to see how unleashing a basilisk is in any way accidental.**

Unleashing him wasn’t the accident.

**I don’t believe you.**

Then why are you writing to me? I’ve offered, more than once, to show you my memory of what really happened. You’ve refused.

A silver sliver of moonlight peeks out from behind a layer of fog.

**Myrtle was…fond of you. Did you know that?**

I was always kind to her, he replies immediately.

**I wasn’t accusing you of anything.**

That's refreshing.

She grits her teeth.  **Did you feel badly at all? About her death?**

Badly enough that I didn’t want it to be for nothing, he says.

 **What does that mean?** A flurry of snow settles in melting, miniscule flakes along the collar of her grey wool coat.  **Tom? What does that mean?**

Why haven’t you told anyone about me?

She pretends that she can’t feel her heart swoop and startle and _sink_ , like a leaded, dead-weight anchor—

**Why would I? It isn’t as if you can do me any real harm—not in your present state, at least—and I happen to find your predicament rather fascinating. I did a bit of reading over the holiday, and from what I understand, horcruxes are not normally so…interactive.**

She adjusts the knot of her scarf; her breath is coming out of her mouth in untouchable, ice-white clouds.

There is nothing normal about a horcrux to begin with, Hermione. Surely you know that by now.

The wind picks up.

She shivers.

 

* * *

 

_The mess at the end of that school year—with Sirius Black and Professor Snape, with a full moon and a helpless Lupin and Scabbers the rat—no, no, Peter Pettigrew, he had been a **person** , he had been a **man** , full-grown and twitchy—it had made her wonder._

_It had made her **think**._

_A murderer and a traitor and a scoundrel had been hiding in plain sight. He had been living in Ron’s bedroom, in **Hogwarts** , and no one had suspected a thing. _

_Her first night home, snug in her childhood bedroom—all petal-pink walls and gleaming white wainscoting, a pair of neatly organized bookshelves and a spindly-legged escritoire—she spent an hour studying the front cover of Tom Riddle’s diary._

**_Tom Marvolo Riddle._ **

_It was a unique name. It was an **odd** name. It was memorable, it was interesting, and there was something prickly about it, something that itched at the marrow of her skull and had done since she had first laid eyes on it. _

_She fished out a spare sheet of paper._

_She clicked the end of her ball-point pen._

_She tried Greek and German and French, Latin and Spanish, Gaelic and Portuguese and Italian, even—she substituted Thomas for Tom, removed Riddle entirely, rearranged letters and eliminated duplicates— **dolor mel timor** —pain honey fear— _

_She finally saw it._

**_Tom Marvolo Riddle._ **

**_~~Mal roid~~ Voldemort. _ **

**_~~Aim~~ lord Voldemort. _ **

**_I am Lord Voldemort._ **

_She dropped her pen._

 

* * *

 

**_(July 22, 1994)_ **

 

She mulls over what to say, who to tell, how to destroy him—weeks and weeks and weeks go by, and she keeps the diary in an outer pocket of her satchel, sturdy, scuffed brown leather shielding her from the visual reminder that she had been fooled and duped and lied to for nearly three full years.

She doesn’t feel betrayed, not exactly, but she feels _stupid_ , humiliated, ashamed that she had not caught it, had not _recognized_ that he was not just another puzzle with a missing piece.

She confronts him on a Friday.

 **Hello, Tom,** she writes, tapping her feet against the plush ivory carpet that covers her bedroom floor.

Hermione, he returns. Are you having a nice holiday? I haven’t heard from you in ages.

 **My holiday has been fine,** she says. **It hasn’t rained in a week.**

How fortuitous.

**Indeed. I’ve a bit of a funny story to tell you, though.**

Oh?

**Yes. You see, I was reading about anagrams the other day and had the most distressing realization.**

It’s awfully easy to rationalize a realization.

She grimaces.  **Clever**.

You were saying?

She listens to the shrill, melodious chirping of the sparrows outside her window.  **Tom Marvolo Riddle: I am Lord Voldemort,** she writes slowly, carefully, deliberately, staring, unblinking, until her vision is blurry and the words have been soaked into the page and into his psyche and then she _waits_.

What is a Lord Voldemort?

She goes completely still.  **Don’t pretend you don’t know.**

I’m not pretending anything. What is distressing about a frankly incomprehensible reorganization of the letters of my name?

Her head swims, ear drums drowning in a brittle, blue-grey wave of apprehension.  **I’m going to give this diary to Albus Dumbledore. There’s no point in lying.**

I don’t understand. What is it that I’m lying about, Hermione? 

Nausea stirs in the pit of her stomach. It is possible, of course, that he had not yet conceived the idea of Voldemort at sixteen—

**Two years ago you said that you were stuck. In this diary. What did you mean?**

I meant just that. I’m stuck. I made an error while I was creating the horcrux, and my personality, my thoughts, my memories up until that day—they’re all preserved, indefinitely, with this book as my only corporeal link to the outside world. 

Her hands are trembling. She stands up. She goes into the kitchen. She fills a burgundy _World’s Best Dad_ coffee mug with tap water. She presses her forehead against the cool ceramic tile of the island counter. She returns to her bedroom.  **Can you do magic?** she asks, desperate.

No. I can’t _do_ anything, Hermione. I can open up my mind, show you what I remember—but nothing else. It’s like purgatory, but lonelier. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in almost half a century. 

She reads his response and it is like needles and paper cuts and she is not sure, suddenly, what to believe.

He is an enigma.

_Enigma, gamine, name, game, in in in—_

He is a mystery.

_Mystery, stymy, rest, yes, yet yet yet—_

**When I get back to Hogwarts, I want to meet you,** she says.

She is a liar.

_Liar, lair, ail, air, la la la—_

I thought you’d never ask.

She takes a sip of water; it’s lukewarm.

She is terrified.

 

* * *

****

_School started._

_She turned fifteen._

_The Triwizard Tournament was announced and Viktor Krum began to follow her around the library and Ron made a spectacle of himself in front of Fleur Delacour and—_

_She still didn’t tell anyone about Tom Riddle’s diary._

 

* * *

 


	2. II

* * *

 

_**(December 25, 1994)** _

 

The night of the Yule Ball, she learns that she is capable of hating the people she loves most. She learns what resentment feels like, learns that happiness is relative and that triumph is fleeting. She learns that her name is not in any way compatible with the Bulgarian language and that spite tastes _sour_ when it's directed at Ron Weasley, no matter how much he may deserve it.

By the time she returns to her dormitory, her cheeks are tearstained and her mascara is smudged. She digs through the bottom drawer of her armoire; she sniffles, wipes her nose, registers a single sleek curl tumbling out of her chignon as it caresses her bare shoulder.

 **Tom** , she writes a minute later, nearly breaking off the tip of her quill as she presses down, down, trying in vain to push the ink into the page faster, harder, brutal and quick. **Are you there?**

It has been months since she last talked to him.

She closes her eyes.

She sees Ron's face, screwed up in anger, hears his voice crack over the din of the orchestra as he complains about Viktor, about _her_ —

Hermione? Are you alright?

She chokes out a laugh.

It has been _months_.

 **I'd like to meet you now,** she replies, tugging at the neckline of her dress. She is _suffocating._

Hold on tight, he warns her.

It is a mistake, she knows that it is a mistake, and she gropes around for her wand and she grips the worn leather corner of the diary and then—

The room tilts.

Gravity pitches her forward.

She _falls_.

 

* * *

 

_Tom Riddle was not anything she expected him to be._

_He was beautiful, unfairly so, with pale, luminous skin and large, dark eyes shuttered in thick black lashes. He had high cheekbones, crimson-red lips, and a wide, delicate jaw. His hair was wavy; his smile was practiced; his shoulders were broad and his legs were long and she could not believe—she could not_ _**believe**_ _—_

" _Hermione," he said, something that might have been surprise coloring his voice; and it was deep, of course it was, and it resonated hot and sharp in her blood, and she felt, all at once, almost overwhelmingly off-balance._

" _Tom Marvolo Riddle," she whispered, stepping back and away, ensuring that she was just out of his reach._

_They were at Hogwarts. It was an ageless scene—they were outside, standing in one of the perimeter courtyards that blocked off entry to the Forbidden Forest, and the air was warm and the moon was full and she surmised, from the chirping of the crickets in a nearby juniper bush, that it was probably early summer._

" _Are you alright?" he asked again, stuffing his hands in his pockets. His Slytherin-green tie was undone, hanging loose around his neck. "You appear to be…upset."_

" _I_ _ **am**_ _upset," she said crossly. "Where are we? What is this memory?"_

 _His lips twitched._ " _I see you brought your wand," he remarked casually._

" _Of course I did," she snapped. "You could have been lying about any number of things. I'd like to be able to protect myself should the need ever arise."_

 _He snorted and turned towards the castle, squinting into the distance; she followed his gaze, saw a small first-year boy approaching them, hands gently cupped together._ " _Don't worry. He can't see us," he told her._

" _Who is he?"_

 _He shrugged._ " _Me, obviously. I was twelve."_

 _She watched, nonplussed, as the boy knelt down on the grass, hissing into his hands and looking furtively around the empty yard._ " _What is he—" she broke off, startled._

_A tiny green snake slithered out of the boy's hands; he then smiled shyly, clearly pleased at its escape, and got to his feet._

" _A seventh-year Gryffindor played a prank on the Slytherin girls," Riddle explained quietly. "Snuck a bunch of garter snakes into their laundry baskets. Pringle, the caretaker, suggested that they be…eradicated—thought it'd be easier than trying to catch them all."_

" _Must not have known you were a Parselmouth," she said, tone crisp._

 _He glanced at her._ " _I_ _saved the snakes from Pringle, of course, which is how the other Slytherins in my year found out about my…abilities. That was after this, though. This one was the first."_

 _She crossed her arms over her chest._ " _What is your point, exactly?"_

_He chuckled, and the sound unsettled her. She did not know why._

" _I've always liked snakes, Hermione," he replied easily. "And I take rather excellent care of the things that I like."_

 

* * *

 

_**(March 1, 1995)** _

 

They interact more often after Christmas.

She takes to bringing the diary with her to the library, to meals, to study sessions with Harry—she divulges her appreciation for _Hogwarts, A History_ , admits that she has always wondered if the brewing of a good batch of Polyjuice is as difficult as her textbooks say it is. He shares his memories of his own N.E.W.T. level lessons, seems charmed by her determination to take richly detailed notes, corrals her into a two-hour debate over the Ministry's use of the Dementor's Kiss as a form of capital punishment. He is almost pathologically reverent of magic, of all that it can accomplish, and makes a valiant effort to teach her the rudimentary principles of Legilimency using a bell jar and a purloined stone basin that he refers to as a Pensieve.

She doesn't provide him with her last name, doesn't mention that she is a muggle-born, the only daughter of a pair of upper-middle-class dentists with delusions of intellectual grandeur; she neglects to remove her red and gold Gryffindor tie one evening, trips into an otherwise calm memory of a gorgeous autumn day by the lake, and endures forty minutes of his scathing, judgmental astonishment before deigning to recount the story of her Sorting.

He tells her that is an orphan, that his mother was a witch—one of the last remaining descendants of Salazar Slytherin, he notes with pride—and that his father had been a muggle.

"You're a half-blood?" she blurts out, stunned.

He smirks. "I like to think the Slytherin half of my heritage more than makes up for what the rest of it is unfortunate enough to lack."

"So your father is…still alive, then?" she quickly interjects.

His expression falters, shifts into something much more difficult to read. "No," he says curtly. "He isn't."

She finds that he is fascinating, and that he is brilliant, and that she is rather selfishly glad that he trapped this part of himself inside his diary at sixteen years old.

She is aware, however, that she is playing with fire.

She wants to scoff at the metaphor, wants to roll her eyes and sigh disdainfully and then walk away from it entirely—but the description is accurate, and it is visceral, and she _understands_ now, she understands what it really means.

Because she is the match and he is the spark and she can guess quite well what will happen if she keeps putting the two of them together.

She will ignite.

She will _burn_.

She will be reduced to ashes, and he will remain dangerous, and still—

Still, still, _still_ she keeps writing.

 

* * *

 

_Ron eventually apologized, begrudgingly, and the remainder of the term passed with a strained sort of normality._

_Until the night of the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament, at least._

_It was a hedge maze, an elaborate challenge full of twists and turns and mythical, magical beasts._

_It was a disaster._

_It was a tragedy._

 

* * *

 

_**(June 24, 1995)** _

 

She witnesses Harry return from nowhere, sees him holding onto Cedric Diggory's lifeless body and gasping out nonsense, round-rimmed glasses askew, no, broken, no, _shattered_ —and she _knows_ , knows that something dreadful has happened, knows that her life is about to change, violently, _again_ —and she cannot help herself, cannot stop her hands from reaching into her bag and pulling out the diary and fumbling to open it, heart racing and panic swelling—

 **Tell me again,** she writes, flinching as she hears Cedric's mother wailing from the opposite end of the quidditch pitch. **Tell me you don't know who Voldemort is.**

Seriously? What's wrong—

**Tom. Please.**

I've told you before, Hermione, I have no bloody idea what a Voldemort is. I'd never even seen the name before you brought it up last year.

"—think Moody took Harry into the castle, should we find Dumbledore?" Ron is asking, face white.

"Yeah—yes, we should, we should—definitely find Dumbledore immediately," she babbles, reading and re-reading and searing Tom's response into her memory.

Rumors begin to ripple through the benches and she filters out the screaming, the screeching, the stilted speculation that You-Know-Who has returned or been spotted or—

"Right, let's go," Ron mutters, hurtling unsteadily down the narrow stadium staircase.

She breathes.

She is jostled from behind, someone with an Irish accent telling her to _move, now, hurry_ —and she breathes.

Hermione?

"Hermione?" Ron calls out.

She breathes.

She needs static, she needs silence, she needs the noise to _stop_ —

"Hermione, where are you?" Ron is shouting.

Hermione, where did you go?

She breathes.

"I'm right here," she says loudly, straightening her shoulders and shoving her way through the crowd.

She slides the diary back into her bag just in time for Ron to wrap his fingers around her wrist.

She breathes.

 

* * *

 

_Harry confirmed Voldemort's resurrection and was immediately declared insane._

_She quit writing to Tom Riddle, wrapped the diary in a Tinkerbelle pillowcase—a well-washed remnant of her childhood—and left it to rot under the center of her mattress when she went to visit Viktor in Bulgaria._

_She also told Dumbledore about the horcrux._

_She confessed everything the very first day of September, leapt off of the train with her shiny new prefect's badge pinned to her cardigan and her fingernails bitten raw, cuticles shredded into gummy red slivers._

_She had prepared herself for his disappointment, for his censure and his contempt and the inevitable dimming of his twinkling blue eyes._

_What she got instead, though, was a mission._

_A task._

_An induction to the Order of the Phoenix and a crash course on Dark magic and subterfuge from the real Mad-Eye Moody and Sirius Black._

_She was to befriend Tom Riddle; she was to gain access to his trust and his memories and his secrets._

_She was to report back to Dumbledore on every second Thursday._

_And she was not, under any circumstance, to tell Harry._

 

* * *

 


	3. III

* * *

 

**_(September 2, 1995)_ **

 

It is unseasonably warm.

She collects a navy gingham blanket, a wide yellow headband, and Tom Riddle’s diary; she then makes her excuses to Harry, to Ron, to Ginny, and goes to the lake. The giant squid is swimming languidly just beneath the surface as she arrives, and the sky is a clear, cerulean blue.

She is nervous.

Twenty yards away, Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil are sunbathing.

She twists her hair into a messy topknot.

She does not want to do this.

 **Tom?** she eventually writes, settling the diary flat across her lap.

Hermione? What happened? It’s been ages, I thought something might have been wrong. Are you okay?

She chews on her tongue.  **I’m fine. Something did happen, though. Something rather unpleasant. Your diary got left behind, and I’ve only just gotten it back. I’m sorry it’s been so long.**

What happened? You worried me.

She grimaces.  **I’d rather tell you in person, if it isn’t too much trouble.**

No trouble at all, he replies swiftly. I’ve missed you.

As if from very far away, she hears Lavender release a ringing peal of laughter; it echoes across the grounds, mocking and far too real for comfort. 

 **I’ve missed you, too** .

She is not lying, and she does not want to do this.

 

* * *

 

_Dumbledore insisted that sixteen year-old Tom Riddle knew precisely who Voldemort was._

_Dumbledore insisted that sixteen year-old Tom Riddle had known precisely what he was doing when he had opened the Chamber of Secrets and let out the basilisk._

_Dumbledore insisted that sixteen year-old Tom Riddle was cunning and manipulative and had been playing her—deftly, with finesse, like a virtuoso with his very favorite violin—from the moment she had picked up his diary and made the decision to continue writing to him._

_“What could sixteen year-old You-Know-Who possibly know that could help us defeat **current** You-Know-Who?” she asked, shell-shocked and numb. _

_“It can only be beneficial to know what it is that our enemy holds most dear,” he replied kindly._

_And she nodded._

_Because Tom Riddle was treacherous, he had to be, and she could not forget that._

_Not again._

 

* * *

 

**_(October 12, 1995)_ **

 

She thinks, at first, that she is being paranoid.

She thinks that she is imagining the way his eyes seem to narrow—almost imperceptibly, _almost_ —when she asks innocent, probing questions about his teachers, about his housemates, about whether or not he’s ever successfully cast an Unforgivable.

She thinks that the tension between them—awkward and obvious and so, so electric—when she brings up Voldemort is all in her head.

It isn’t.

“Hermione,” he says on a Thursday, ankles crossed and posture nonchalant as she rifles through an out-of-print Charms book in the library. “How well do you know Albus Dumbledore? You mentioned him before, I think, years ago—you said you were going to give him my diary, didn’t you?”

She freezes. “He’s the headmaster in my time. Why?”

He stands up, stretching out his arms; his shirt goes taut across his abdomen, starched white linen molding seamlessly to the flat planes of his chest.

Her mouth goes dry.

“Oh, I just thought it was an interesting coincidence,” he muses, running long, graceful fingers down the side of a chestnut paneled bookshelf. “That you’re acquainted with him, I mean. He always hated me—probably would’ve failed me in Transfiguration if he thought he could’ve gotten away with it.”

She swallows. “Why did he hate you?”

He trudges to the far end of the table she’s sitting at, steps listless and methodical. “Honestly, Hermione, that was always a bit of a mystery,” he says. “Especially since he was the one to introduce me to magic, which—oh, did you not know that?”

She blinked rapidly. “No,” she says. “I didn’t.”

“Oh. Well—yes, he found me in the muggle orphanage, explained to me why I had always been so different from the other children. He was pleasant about it, mostly, but when I arrived at Hogwarts and was sorted into Slytherin…he became rather cold. Never did find out why that was.”

Sweat pools in the divot between her collarbones. “How strange,” she responds slowly. “Perhaps I should ask him about it.”

He halts in front of her chair, tapping his fingers against the tabletop, tracing the whorls and lines and splinters ingrained in the depths of the wood; and she realizes, with a jolt, that he has been circling her throughout the course of their conversation, like a hawk does its prey—waiting, bloodthirsty and impatient, to swoop in for the hunt and the catch and the kill.

“Perhaps you should,” he says with a small, secret smile.

His teeth are white enough to gleam.

And her heartbeat _stutters_.

 

* * *

 

_Harry became a social pariah, and confided to her in January that his nightmares had gotten nothing but worse since he had come back to school._

_“Don’t laugh, but—I think they’re visions,” he said, sounding guilty. “I think I’m seeing what Voldemort’s seeing, and I don’t think he knows that I’m there, in his head, if that makes sense? It’s confusing.”_

_She was worried for him._ _“If you can see what he’s seeing, then he can do the same to you,” she pointed out. “Look, do you know what Legilimency is? You just need to learn how to protect your mind, Harry, and I can teach you—it’s fairly easy as long as you practice.”_

_“You know how to do that?”_

_She flushed._ _“I—I learned last year, yes,” she answered evasively. “Do you want to learn, or not? It will help with the nightmares.”_

_Meanwhile, Ron started dating Lavender Brown, and for three solid months, he could almost always be found stumbling out of a broom cupboard with a swollen mouth and a telltale smear of lipstick on his collar._

_She felt only the faintest frisson of jealousy; she was too busy to feel anything else._

_She ordered a stack of ancient, essentially useless books from a shop in Knockturn Alley, and wrote a seven-page letter to the Dark Arts teacher at Durmstrang— **horcruxes** , she emphasized, underlining the word twice, **I need to know about horcruxes**. _

_She visited Tom daily, between lessons and before bed, paid scrupulous, undivided attention to whatever names and dates and pointedly ambiguous details of his personal life that he was clever enough to only vaguely allude to—their exchanges always felt a bit like a game of chess, strategic and playful and **organized** , a checklist merging inexorably towards a checkmate. _

_She hated that she enjoyed them._

_She hated that she enjoyed **him.**_

_But she hypothesized that Dumbledore knew something about Tom Riddle that she did not, something important and inflammatory and imperative, probably, to the fight against Voldemort; to **Harry’s** fight against Voldemort. _

_She was determined to discover what it was._

 

* * *

 

**_(March 11, 1996)_ **

 

“You always bring me outside when it’s summer,” she sighs, head lolling back onto the grass as the sun pierces her skin. “Why is that? And how do you have so many memories filled with weather like this? We’re in _Scotland_.”

He reaches up to undo the top button of his shirt. “I assumed that you would prefer to visit while it’s pleasant,” he replies, leaning back on his elbows. “Was I incorrect? Because I’m sure I can find a suitably rousing thunderstorm to quench your thirst for discord.”

“No, I’ve enough of that at home right now, thank you,” she says with a huff. “It’s _March_.”

“It can’t be that dreadful.”

“It isn’t, not really, just…it’s more to do with a friend of mine,” she explains, carefully plucking at a dandelion and watching it float away in the breeze. “He’s going through...a lot right now, and I just wish that I could do more for him. It’s frustrating.”

“Your…friend,” he repeats blandly. “Is he your boyfriend?”

She coughs. “ _What_? Of course not. He’s—we’ve been friends for years. He’s like a brother.”

He relaxes, and her lungs feel as if they’ve been strangled. “Well, what’s his problem? Maybe I can help,” he proposes, sidling closer.

She looks askance at his right hand; there is barely an inch separating it from her left hip. And it occurs to her, then, that her skirt has ridden up, grey and gold pleated plaid skimming the tops of her legs just so, and she is suddenly _staggeringly_ aware of the diamond-shaped cluster of burnt-brown freckles decorating the slope of her outer thigh, well within his line of sight—

“Hermione?”

She meets his eyes, and they are fathomless. “What would happen if you touched me?” she murmurs, curious.

He licks his lips.

“Have I never done that before?"

“You really, really haven’t,” she says.

He hums and holds his hand up. “Shall I try, then?”

It is a challenge and a dare and a _promise_ rolled into one—she knows that, senses it, and she knows that it is rash and stupid and _foolish_ to tilt her chin down and offer him the softest smile she can manage, she _knows_ —

But she also knows that Ron could never say ‘no’ to Lavender on the days when mottled purple bruises accompanied candy-pink lipstick stains. She knows that Draco Malfoy had been unaccountably nice to her for _weeks_ after he’d seen her half-dressed in the prefect’s bathroom, and that Cormac McLaggen had been willing to follow her into the _library_ in order to secure a date to Hogsmeade. And so—

“You should absolutely try,” she whispers.

His answering smirk, she thinks, is practically feral.

 

* * *

 

_The battle at the Department of Mysteries was as illuminating as it was terrible._

_She was cornered by Lucius Malfoy—the **instigator** of everything that had happened between her and Tom Riddle, she had very nearly forgotten—when she lost track of Harry and Luna and Sirius. _

_“Hermione Granger,” Malfoy crooned, taking a menacing step forward._

_The silkiness of his voice was at quite transparent odds with the crookedness of his Death Eater mask, with the trembling of his smile and the pin-thin dilation of his pupils; she had never seen him so disheveled, so out of sorts, and she spared a brief half-second to wonder about what it was that he was so frightened of—_

_“Who told you to give me his diary?” she asked, palms flat against the wall._

_“His **diary** ,” Malfoy scoffed—but then he paused, gaze hardening. “Are you telling me, Miss Granger, that you wrote in that diary? You wrote in that diary, and you’re…standing in front of me. Alive. Intact. How extraordinary.” _

_She sneered, shuffled her feet and crept sideways, hoping to hit a doorknob._ _“What does that matter?” she demanded. “I know who it belonged to, and I want to know who gave you the idea to plant it inside Hogwarts. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Return it to the school with a student, re-open the Chamber of Secrets—set the basilisk on an unsuspecting population of mudbloods?”_

_His eyebrows, so blond they were virtually invisible, drew together in confusion._ _“How do you know—”_

_“ **Avada Kedavra**!” someone shouted from behind him._

_Chaos erupted._

_Malfoy’s body tipped forward, grey eyes glassy and unfocused, and horror welled up in her throat, a bitter blockade to air and shock and reason—and then Antonin Dolohov was there, and she was running, she did not know where to, and he was muttering in Russian and there was a colossal explosion of hypnotic purple light and by the time she collapsed from the pain of the curse she was almost **grateful** for the reprieve, she did not **care** if it made her a coward, and she felt the blinding sting of Tom Riddle’s concern all the way through the pages of his diary, all the way through the back pocket of her jeans— _

_Later, she would wake up in St. Mungo’s, scratchy beige hospital sheets pulled up to her chin, with a lingering headache and a pair of cleanly broken ribs; Ron would be hysterical, Harry would be catatonic, and Sirius Black would be dead._

_There would be only two people left alive who knew the truth about her and Tom Riddle._

 

* * *

 


	4. IV

* * *

 

**_(July 6, 1996)_ **

 

Dolohov’s curse leaves a scar.

It is angry and pink and puckered, still waxy, still tender, and it stretches from just beneath her breasts to about an inch above her navel. Tom traces the outline of it with his tongue, eyes glittering and rage palpable—but he is gentle, uncharacteristically so, when he leans up to kiss her, the pillow of his bottom lip catching the saliva-slick top of hers, sticky and warm and sweet, like a mouthful of honey.

“I am going to kill whoever did this to you,” he says, tone casual. “As soon as I get out of here.”

She pushes him away. “Wait, what? _Get out of here_?” she repeats. “How, exactly, are you going to manage that? I haven’t found _anything_ that would indicate it’s even _possible_ , not without an outside vessel, and I’ve been looking for _years_.”

He shifts backwards on the bed, mattress creaking under his knees. His expression is smug. “We’ll find something eventually, though, won’t we?” he says, running a soothing hand up and down her bare leg. “That’s all I meant, Hermione, there’s no need to look at me like that.”

She bunches emerald green sheets between her fingers; they’re satin, shiny and smooth, and they flow like water over the trenches of her knuckles. “How am I looking at you?” she asks.

He laughs, reaching up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Like you don’t trust me,” he answers, rubbing his thumb across the delicate point of her chin. “Which is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

She twists her body, leans over him so that she can pull the curtains closed around his four-poster. She ties the sash into a knot—a trefoil, underhanded and simple, a loop inside of a loop in triplicate. "Ridiculous,” she agrees firmly.

And then it is dark, pitch-black and quiet, and she thinks she might be drowning—in them, in this, in _him_.

 

* * *

 

_Summer went by in a tempestuous haze of sex and deception; she ignored Harry and Ron and Viktor, left letters unanswered and bruises unexplained—she avoided mirrors, told Dumbledore that she was reasonably confident that Tom Riddle already had a plan, a way to reanimate himself at sixteen years old, and that she was not sure that she would be able to stop him._

_In response, she was taken to meet a man named Horace Slughorn, was instructed by Mad-Eye Moody to bring up the subject of horcruxes over Jasmine tea and fennel-cheddar scones; Slughorn spent ninety seconds babbling nervously before he lit a lace-trimmed handkerchief on fire and informed her, in a somewhat squeaky voice, that he would be **ecstatic** to reclaim his teaching post at Hogwarts in the fall. _

_“You are my best and most secret of weapons, Miss Granger,” Dumbledore said on the last day of August. “And you have done an admirable job with Tom. What I am about to ask of you, however—what I am about to explain to you—you cannot come back from. Do you understand?”_

_She said yes, and her world began to crumble._

 

* * *

 

**_(September 5, 1996)_ **

 

Dumbledore speaks with Slughorn.

She then finds out that Voldemort had made more horcruxes—one prior to the diary, four more after, and one much later, on accident, the night he killed Harry’s parents.

She finds out that Tom Riddle had murdered his own father and infused an old family heirloom—from his mother’s side, the Gaunts, the last remaining descendants of Salazar Slytherin—with the very first piece of his soul.

She finds out that it was a ring, solid gold and cracked onyx, and that Dumbledore had already destroyed it, turning his own hand into something shriveled and mostly dead in the process.

She finds out all of this, and she thinks about losing her virginity in a tangle of limbs and lies, thinks about Harry believing that he could beat Voldemort, that all it would take was six syllables and five, four, three seconds of bright green light, two words and a single curse and he could be _defeated_.

She thinks about how naïve Harry is, how he isn’t aware of what he’s doing—even as he comes to her for more lessons in Legilimency—and how he isn’t aware of what _she’s_ doing—even as she disappears for longer and longer stretches of time, returns with unkempt hair and laugh lines that don’t quite match the sadness that lurks in her eyes—and she thinks about how he will never be aware, _cannot_ be aware, because she is clever and he is brave and she thinks, she _thinks,_ she thinks she knows what Dumbledore is not saying when he talks about the final horcrux, the accident, and she hopes and wishes and prays that she is wrong, that she has misunderstood the subtext of their conversations—but she has not.

She has _not_.

She has not, and she feels _betrayed_ , wants to scream at Dumbledore and tell Harry the truth and throw Tom Riddle and his toxic fucking diary into the bottom of the fucking lake, straight into the gullet of the giant squid, wants to let the grindylows get their grimy little claws into its pages and just—just fucking—just _rip_ , just tear it into shreds and scraps and slivers so small and so waterlogged that there is not even the barest hint of a _chance_ that they will not disintegrate—

She hates Tom Riddle, she hates Voldemort, she hates _Dumbledore_ , even, and it hurts, it aches, it inspires within her the most appalling desire to _destroy_ —

She does not know herself.

It is the worst part.

 

* * *

 

_Autumn arrived with a biting breeze and a mosaic of falling leaves—they were red and orange and yellow, filled with veins of brown and spots of black, crunching comfortably beneath the soles of her boots._

_She turned seventeen; Tom fucked her fully-clothed over a table in the library, teeth lodged into the back of her neck as he rolled his hips, belt buckle clattering in the hushed silence of the Restricted Section. Afterwards, he took her to the seventh floor and showed her how to access the Room of Requirement._

_“It adheres to Gamp’s Principle Exceptions, obviously, but it’s a rather remarkable hiding place if you know what to ask for,” he said, slinging an arm around her waist and planting a kiss on her cheek._

_Meanwhile, Harry had unearthed a Potions textbook of dubious origin, Ron had decided to try out for the Gryffindor quidditch team, and Draco Malfoy—_

_Draco Malfoy was exhibiting some very odd behavior, indeed._

 

* * *

 

**_(December 31, 1996)_ **

 

Nine minutes before midnight, Tom mentions the cave.

“The orphanage—they used to take us to the ocean. They thought it might, I don’t know, _bolster our spirits_ , or something. And this was before I knew about magic, before I knew that I was different—properly different, I mean—and I wasn’t…well-liked, I suppose you could say, by most of my peers.”

He pauses, looking thoughtful and bitter and _nostalgic_ , almost, which—

“Anyway, I was not particularly popular. I hadn’t yet learned to harness my magic, didn’t even know that my magic was _there_ , and I could make things happen, just by virtue of wanting them badly enough. The other children found me strange, I think. They were rather afraid of me.”

The fire sizzles, embers popping and crackling and hissing against the cast-iron grate; the clock on the mantle reads 11:53.

“At the ocean, though, there was this cave—about fifty feet above the beach, maybe, nestled in the cliffs. I’d always noticed it, but it wasn’t until this girl and her friend—they were being…malicious, and I was—frustrated, and I wanted to _scare_ them, just to wipe those stupid bloody smiles off their faces—I wished for them to disappear, Hermione, and I was staring up at the cave as I did it, and they—they _went there_. It was the first time I had any sort of tangible proof that I might be capable of extraordinary things, the first time I realized that I was, in fact, _better_ —and they were terrified. It was _perfect_.”

She squirms in his lap until the blanket that’s covering them falls to the floor. “There was a girl who used to make fun of my teeth,” she says, turning around so that she’s straddling his thighs. “When I was seven, she took the last available swing at the park, and I was—I was _seven_ , I didn’t know any better, but I—I made her fall. She broke her arm in three places. No one would believe it was my fault, either, no matter how many times I insisted. I cried about it for days. My parents…I think they thought I was having hallucinations.”

His muscles jerk, just for a moment, and she knows that he has recognized the implication of her story; she is a muggle-born, a mudblood, an _abomination_ —

He catches her gaze.

And then he lurches forward, kisses her fiercely, tastes like cinnamon toast and espresso liqueur, and she feels him harden beneath her, the tented placket of his trousers grinding against the steadily dampening front of her knickers—

“Tell me, Hermione,” he pants into her mouth, breath swirling and misting and moist, “has that Voldemort fellow been stopped yet? In your time? I can’t imagine that you’re very safe with him still hanging around.”

The clock announces the hour with a flourish—ringing and rhythmic and dull.

Twelve chimes pass.

She counts them all.

 

* * *

 

_She returned to Hogwarts in mid-January._

_Draco Malfoy was on the train with her, two inches taller and twice as pale. His scowl upon seeing her in one of the only remaining compartments was **ferocious**. _

_“Surprised you didn’t stay at school for the holiday,” he spat. “You’re Dumbledore’s pet now, aren’t you? How **ever** did he keep you fed and watered from so far away?”_

_She rolled her eyes, rummaging through her satchel for Tom’s diary. "_ _It’s called **magic** , Malfoy—perhaps you’ve heard of it?” she retorted._

_His glare intensified, but he stomped off without bothering to reply._

_When she got to the castle, she immediately went to see Dumbledore; she told him about the cave, told him that she was positive that Tom Riddle would have hidden a horcrux there. He listened patiently, presented her with a lemon drop and a satisfied pat on the shoulder before sending her off to the Great Hall for supper._

_She was twenty minutes late._

_Ron didn’t notice, not really._

_But Harry certainly did._

 

* * *

 


	5. V

* * *

 

**_(January 22, 1997)_ **

 

“You and Dumbledore are hiding something from me,” Harry accuses, hands balled into fists.

She winces. “Yes,” she admits, “we are.”

And he looks _wounded_ , and so she opens her mouth again, intent on explaining— _something_ , she could tell him _something_ —and she thinks that the situation might be salvageable, might not be hopeless so long as he never finds out about the diary, about Tom Riddle, about what she’s done and how many years she’s been doing it—

“Save it, Hermione,” he says heatedly, eyes flashing green and silver behind the refractive lenses of his glasses. “I thought you were on my side. I thought—after Sirius— _no more secrets_ , that’s what Dumbledore said. How could you—”

Her forehead creases in a tired frown. “Dumbledore says a lot of things,” she interjects.

“What the hell does that mean?”

She hesitates.

She has privately wondered, of course, why it is that Dumbledore hasn’t yet requested that she destroy Tom Riddle and his diary; she has wondered what else she doesn’t know, what else she hasn’t figured out, wondered where the rest of the puzzle pieces are, and if, when she finds them, they will even _fit_.

“It means that he has a plan, Harry, and we have to—we have to trust him, okay? There isn’t an alternative.” She grimaces. “I’ve checked.”

He clenches his jaw. “Why did you even get involved? The prophecy—none of it’s to do with you, Hermione, it’s _my_ problem.”

She huffs out a humorless laugh and recalls, with a pang of bittersweet regret, Lucius Malfoy’s empty grey eyes as his body hit the ground. “It’s everyone’s problem, Harry. Don’t be stupid.”

 

* * *

 

_Salazar Slytherin’s locket had already been removed by the time Dumbledore took her to the cave. It was a wasted trip, a pointless battle against an army of Inferi that left her shaken and bloody and terribly uncertain that she would be able to handle—to survive—whatever was coming next._

_Because Helga Hufflpuff’s cup was in the Lestrange vault at Gringott’s._

_Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem was rather famously lost—missing— **hidden** , she thought, it could be hidden **anywhere**. _

_They deduced that the sixth horcrux was Voldemort’s snake, Nagini—and the impossibility of destroying her loomed large and incalculable in the forefront of Hermione’s mind._

_As for the seventh—_

_She had spent a cumulative month, at least, holed up in the library, searching for a solution. She studied myths, legends, a hundred different fables and stories that lacked any sort of substance or logic or general believability; she seriously considered making a horcrux for Harry, ruminated over the long-term effects and consequences that such a thing might have on him; she delved deep and then deeper into magical theory, learned more about potions and amulets and embalming rituals than she ever thought she would have a cause to._

_And still, there was nothing._

**_Nothing._ **

 

* * *

 

**_(March 2, 1997)_ **

 

“Are you reading—are those _fairytales_?” Tom asks, bemused.

She shoots him an irritated glare. “Yes, Tom, they’re _fairytales_ ,” she replies, bristling—but then she deflates, shoulders slumping and eyelids quivering, paper-thin and pink and swollen from exhaustion. “Remember last year, when I told you about my friend—how he was going through a lot, and I wished that I could help him?”

He nods, wordless and calculating.

“It’s gotten worse,” she says, sniffling. “So much worse, and it’s looking like he’s going to have to _die_ , and that isn’t—I _can’t_ —all I can think about is how I would take his place if I could, because he deserves _better_ , and how I can’t, and it isn’t fair, and I just—I need to find a way to fix this. No—I _will_ find a way to fix this.”

He drums his fingers against his chin. “You’re…fond of him,” he says, nonplussed. “Your friend.”

“I _love_ him,” she corrects absently; he flinches. She continues, “He’s my brother in all the ways that matter. I can’t—he can’t die. I won’t let him.”

He appraises her thoughtfully. “Why does he have to die?”

She exhales, long and loud. “He just does. There was a prophecy…the reasons are irrelevant. His death is both imminent and necessary, and I refuse to allow it to be _permanent_. Ergo—fairytales. Everyone knows that most fairytales are based on true events, so if I can just find one that _matches—_ ”

“Beedle the Bard,” he interrupts. “You have the book right over there, in that stack. And there’s a story, the Three Brothers—it talks about three magical objects that can be used to thwart Death. The Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility. They call them the—”

“The Deathly Hallows,” she whispers, having frantically flipped to the correct page.

“Yes,” he drawls, inspecting his fingernails. “Those. I’ve always thought they sounded a bit too _real_ to be entirely made-up—it was rumored, actually, that Gellert Grindelwald’s takeover of Europe could be directly attributed to his possession of the Wand, specifically. And if that exists…well, it isn’t such a stretch to conclude that the other two do as well, is it?”

She has spent enough time with Tom Riddle to recognize, albeit distantly, when she is being manipulated. And it is only natural that she questions his motives—because what could he really gain from divulging to her that a story from a children’s book is truer than it is false? Why would he help her, plant this idea in her head and insinuate that Grindelwald had—

Her blood runs cold, and she struggles to organize her thoughts.

Dumbledore had given Harry the Invisibility Cloak when they were first-years.

Dumbledore therefore _knew_ that the Deathly Hallows existed—and if Tom was right, and Grindelwald had, allegedly, been the master of the Elder Wand—and Dumbledore had won a duel against him in 1945—which this version of Tom Riddle could not possibly know—then that meant—

Dumbledore had the Elder Wand.

Dumbledore had the Elder Wand, and since she did not believe in coincidences, did not believe that his irrefutable connection to two of the three Hallows was in any way accidental—she could infer that it was highly probable that Dumbledore knew _precisely_ where the Resurrection Stone was.

Hope blooms in her chest.

She grabs the end of Tom’s tie, yanks him across the table, and kisses him squarely on the mouth. “Thank you,” she breathes. “ _Thank you_.”

 

* * *

 

_She went to Dumbledore and relayed her conversation with Tom Riddle verbatim—and she was careful, so very careful, as she assessed Dumbledore’s reaction with baited breath and narrowed eyes._

_She catalogued his facial tics, microscopic and inconspicuous, took in the barely perceptible tremor that rocked the rim of his half-moon spectacles as his nose twitched; she noticed that he did not blink, not even once, and that his wrecked and ruined hand was curled into the sleeve of his robe, hidden away from her prying, unwavering gaze._

_“Tom helped you,” he said—and that was surprise, she could read it in his posture, in his voice, in the droop of his smile, which was forced and crooked and stilted, and in the methodical patter of his bronze basin water clock as the silence stretched on._

_“But was he right? About the Hallows? Do they exist?” she asked, dismissing his observation with a short wave of her hand._

_“They do exist, yes,” he answered slowly. “Gellert, however…if he did, in fact, have the Elder Wand, he hid it very well, Miss Granger. I am not its master.”_

_Her pulse thundered; he shifted just the slightest bit in his chair, and the wood creaked and groaned and wobbled under his weight._

_“And the Resurrection Stone?” she pressed._

_He stared at her, chin tilted up, long, silvery beard brushing the polished rosewood surface of his desk._ _“Actually,” he said, a ghost of a chuckle edging around the room, cutting through the tension, “I do have that, as it happens.”_

 

* * *

 

**_(April 21, 1997)_ **

 

“Malfoy almost _died_ ,” Ron mumbles at lunch, skin so pale that even his freckles look faded. “Harry said that he just—bled out _everywhere_ , like he’d been gutted. There were _puddles_ , ‘Mione. Puddles. Of Malfoy’s blood.”

She drags the tines of her fork through the crust of her shepherd’s pie. “I told Harry to get rid of that Potions book,” she replies, aggravated and jumpy. “What is a ‘Half-Blood Prince’ anyway? A clever misappropriation of centuries-old monarchial traditions added to what I can only assume is angry, begrudging acceptance of the fact that the blood purists will never find him tolerable—it reeks of cynicism and unhappiness and I’m not at all shocked that this Prince character was dabbling in the Dark arts.”

He takes a messy swig of pumpkin juice, uses the back of his hand to wipe at his mouth. “Yeah, well, Harry is traumatized by this morning’s bloodbath, so don’t rub it in too badly when he tells you that he’s got detention with Snape for the whole rest of term. I know you’re all into those lessons you’ve been giving him—you know, the ones with the eye contact and the concentrating and the headaches he complains about for days?”

She throws a napkin at his forehead. “It’s called _Legilimency_ , Ronald, which you very well know. And—Harry needs to learn, and he needs to be much better at it than he currently is. You know that, too.”

He tears into a roll of sourdough. “Yeah,” he gurgles as he chews. “And I _also_ know that Harry’s still convinced that Malfoy’s up to something, so maybe you should deal with his stalking problem before you go back to teaching him how to meditate.”

She scowls and picks up a custard-filled profiterole. It’s airy and soft with a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar across the top. “Malfoy is harmless,” she says, taking her first bite; the pastry crunches between her teeth, and a shower of golden brown crumbs falls onto her plate.

 

* * *

 

_She watched Draco Malfoy lead a squadron of Death Eaters up the slippery stone steps of the astronomy tower._

_She watched Dumbledore smile, with kindness and sadness and understanding, as Draco raised his own wand—ten inches, hawthorn wood and unicorn hair, she had checked, she had checked the records of **so many wands** —and stripped Dumbledore of his. _

_She watched Professor Snape barrel through the crowd, sallow face twisted into something that might have been hatred, might have been pain, might have been any number of emotions she could not even begin to sift through._

_She watched, from underneath the Invisibility cloak, as Draco Malfoy was pushed aside and away—discarded, almost, purpose served and promptly forgotten._

_She watched as Snape spoke—as he was bathed in an otherworldly glow of noxious green light—_

_And she gasped, frozen and helpless, as Dumbledore’s body toppled over the ledge._

_The Resurrection Stone was heavy in her cardigan pocket._

 

* * *

 


	6. VI

* * *

 

**_(July 5, 1997)_ **

 

She wears a black tulle dress to Dumbledore’s funeral.

It is itchy and uncomfortable, slightly too-short and wholly inappropriate for the weather; she had needed help with the zipper, had tossed aside her wand with a shaking hand and a flash of frustration before reaching for the diary, for Tom.

She does not trust him, and that has become the only constant she can depend upon.

She _craves_ it.

 

* * *

 

_Harry was stubborn and defiant as the summer rolled on—he was devastatingly eager to hurl himself into the fray of the fight, unwilling to acknowledge that he could lose, that he could die, that she might know better._

_“Who was right about Malfoy, Hermione? You, or me?” he demanded, spectacles askew, hair sweat-soaked and tousled. “What happened the last time I decided to listen to you? Dumbledore got **murdered** , that’s what happened.” _

_She studied him carefully, ignoring his outburst._ _“Are the nightmares back?” she asked, voice neutral._

_He flinched, twisting around to punch at his pillow. The rafters of the old house—Grimmauld Place, they’d gone back to Grimmauld Place, there was nowhere left to hide, not now—creaked with age, windows rattling in the wind._ _“Yeah,” he admitted._

_Irritated, and trying not to show it, she pinched her fingertips together and cleared her throat._ _“How long?”_

_He shrugged._ _“Since the funeral, I guess. It’s—he’s…he’s winning, and he knows it. It’s sick. I don’t—it’s stronger than before, too, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”_

_She smoothed her palms down the front of her nightgown._ _“I’ll help you,” she said briskly. “I can teach you more—”_

_“Do I have to die, Hermione? To kill Voldemort?” he interrupted, uncharacteristically solemn._

_Her pulse skipped._ _“What do you mean?”_

_He scratched at his forehead, looking troubled._ _“The Prophecy,” he replied. “It said—and I’ve been thinking, lately, about what it could have meant, right, and it doesn’t…make sense, really, does it? ‘Neither can live while the other survives’—is it a riddle? Is there more to what happened the night he died, when I was a baby?”_

_She stayed perfectly still, mind racing—Dumbledore had been so insistent that Harry be kept unaware, but—she couldn’t very well go horcrux hunting by herself, not if the rest of them were as buried in traps and secrecy and magic as the locket had been—_

_She sighed._ _“Yes,” she answered. “There’s much more to it, Harry.”_

 

* * *

 

**_(August 25, 1997)_ **

 

“You don’t care that I’m a muggle-born,” she says to Tom, carding her fingers through his thick black hair.

It is not a question. “Why would I? I’ve already told you I’m a half-blood,” he says lazily. His head is in her lap, the bare expanse of his neck as enticing it is vulnerable.

“You’re a Slytherin,” she points out, squinting at the way the sun is reflecting off the surface of the lake; it is a sheen of bright, vivid white, staggering and metallic. “And I mean that quite literally. You’re an actual descendant of the man who brought the whole issue of blood purity into existence.”

He scoffs. “When Salazar Slytherin was alive, muggles were still hunting witches for sport,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “Keeping muggle-borns out of Hogwarts had less to do with their blood being _tainted_ and much more to do with self-preservation, I imagine. But history’s warped that notion, hasn’t it? What was, at the time, a completely sensible concept, has been turned into…politics.”

She purses her lips, thoughtful. “Politics,” she says, dragging her nails—round, blunt, unpolished—against his scalp.

He groans, and her stomach clenches. “Feels good,” he murmurs, eyes fluttering shut. “But, yes, politics. There will always be a group that is desirous of more power, more influence, more money—and that group will always have to prove that they deserve it, that they are _better_ than the people they wish to control. Usually that’s impossible, which is how wars get started. But you can’t win a war without conviction, can you? No one will fight for you—fight with you—if you don't give them something to fight _for_.”

The skin between her brows puckers in a scowl. “Who said anything about a war?” she asks tightly.

He smiles. “You’re in one, aren’t you?”

 

* * *

 

_She turned eighteen, Kreacher found the missing Slytherin locket, and Ron refused to be left behind._

_“’Mione, there’re Death Eaters fucking everywhere,” he argued, sloshing lemon-scented Earl Grey over the chipped rim of his teacup. “What am I supposed to do? Go back to school? Snape’s taken it over, it’s basically just a—a **training camp** for Volde—for his supporters.” _

_He had accosted her while she was making a sandwich. An open jar of mayonnaise sat on the butcher-block counter; she was holding a butter knife, and there was a thin slice of whole-wheat bread laid out on a porcelain plate. Tom’s diary was tucked into her back pocket, next to her wand._

_“You know Harry doesn’t want either of us risking our lives for him,” she replied, slapping a piece of oven-roasted turkey onto the bread. “Besides, Ronald, there’s more to this than just running away. It’s—it’s definitely going to be dangerous. And your mother won’t even allow you to join the Order, what do you think she’ll say when you ask to go off with Harry and I? When we can’t tell her anything?”_

_He was quiet._ _“Speaking of not telling me anything, where have you been going, Hermione?”_

_Her knife scraped against the glass of the mayonnaise jar, punctuating her startled silence with a squeak and a screech, awkward and loud._ _“Going? None of us have left this house in weeks.”_

_“I was looking for you the other day, though,” he said, tone laced with confusion. “And the day before that, too, but your room was empty. Not a big deal, really, this house is bloody huge, but…you weren’t anywhere. All I could find was that stupid diary you’re always writing it.”_

_She fumbled for a larger knife, lined up the blade with a vine-ripe red tomato and cut down, clean and swift._ _“Did you forget you’re a wizard, Ronald? You could have just used a locator spell,” she huffed, tearing into a head of butter lettuce. She peeled apart the leaves, scrubbing at the grit with her thumb._

_“I did use a locator—thing!” he exclaimed, bewildered. “Guess I could’ve done it wrong, but—”_

_“You’re often sloppy with your wand movements,” she interjected, deliberating over a block of Orkney Cheddar. “I’ve been telling you that since we were first-years.”_

_“Yeah,” he said doubtfully. “That’s—yeah, that’s true.”_

_She placed a second slice of bread on top of the lettuce._ _“Now, if you’re really serious about wanting to come with us, you should know what we’re actually planning to do,” she said, turning around._

_He brightened._ _“Yeah?”_

_“Yes,” she corrected, taking the rickety chair across from him. “Have you ever heard of a horcrux?”_

 

* * *

 

**_(October 5, 1997)_ **

 

“You know how to get out of here, don’t you? How to turn from…whatever it is you are, into a person. With a—a real body. A corporeal form. You’ve worked it out already,” she remarks, brushing a small pile of yellow-green moss off the end of an overturned log.

She sits down, gingerly, and he appraises her with dark, curiously empty eyes. “Yes,” he says simply.

She sniffs, nodding slowly, and glances around the clearing. They are in the Forbidden Forest; some long-past, thirteen year-old version of Tom Riddle is out collecting aconite flowers. “Does it have anything to do with me? I’ve thought about this for years, you know—I’ve come up with a hundred different scenarios, a thousand different reasons you might have for keeping me close—none of them seem _likely_ , however, and it’s a bit annoying to…not know.”

He chuckles. “Likely?” he echoes, leaves crunching as he shifts his weight onto his heels. “You’re discounting them for being _unlikely_ , rather than impossible?”

She curls her hands around the low-hanging sleeves of the jacket she has on—it’s one of his, a navy blazer. The slick satin lining is cool against her wrists. “Don’t change the subject,” she says with an impatient exhale.

He crosses his arms over his chest. “You said, when we first met, that—and I’m paraphrasing— _intent and force of will are significant components of magic_ ,” he replies, coiling his tongue over the ridge of his front teeth.

In the distance, a wolf howls mournfully; it is early evening, and the full moon is a wispy, transparent ghost in the sky. Night is falling fast.

“You’re changing the subject again,” she points out.

“I’m not, actually.”

“So—what, if you just _wish it_ badly enough, you can walk out of your fifty year-old diary horcrux—no repercussions, no complications, _nothing_?”

He holds out his hand to help her stand up. She takes it. “Not if _I_ wish it badly enough, Hermione,” he drawls, twirling her around, lips twisting up at the corners as her skirt flares out and she is propelled into the circle of his arms. “And my return to humanity is conditional, anyway—there cannot be a single remaining facet of my old body, my old _self_ , if I am to reappear…intact.”

His heart beats steadily beneath her palm, and she finally understands. “Looks like we need each other, then,” she challenges.

He smirks, and then kisses her—

It tastes like she’s won.

 

* * *

 

_Tom told her that there was only one way into a vault at Gringott’s—with a goblin, after a thorough security check._

_“A wand is usually considered sufficient identification,” he explained, hand roving along the inside of her thigh._

_Her breath hitched. "_ _That…is problematic,” she said, biting her lip._

_“Indeed. Your best bet would be Polyjuice and an Imperius curse—you’re not adverse to Unforgivables, are you?” he asked mockingly._

_Mad-Eye Moody procured an unspecified amount of genetic material from Bellatrix Lestrange—no one had any desire to ask how—and Remus Lupin revealed that the Order kept an impressive reserve of Polyjuice in the attic at Grimmauld Place—although, Hermione noticed, he was oddly reticent when she inquired about its origins._

_It was agreed that Harry would cast the Imperius._

_And in the end, it was all rather suspiciously easy._

_Tom had warned her about a multiplying jinx that had been a particular favorite of his when he’d wanted to hide his belongings from his fellow Slytherins—he had taught her the counter-curse, among twelve others, and suggested that they wear gloves, just in case._

_“How do we destroy a horcrux?” she asked Tom after the Polyjuice had worn off and Hufflepuff’s cup was locked away in a cupboard in her bedroom. “Dumbledore—he never went into detail, and aside from something uncontrollably destructive, like Fiendfyre, I am…at a loss. Will poison work?”_

_He hummed, sheets bunching up around his naked waist as he sat up and stretched._ _“Fiendfyre will work, you’re right, but so will basilisk venom,” he yawned, nonchalant._

_“Basilisk venom,” she repeated. “Like the basilisk you keep as a pet in the Chamber of Secrets. The same basilisk that killed Myrtle.”_

_He grinned, sharp and quick and cutting._ _“That’s the one,” he confirmed, before pausing. “I could…take you to meet him, if you’d like. He won’t hurt you, not if I don’t command it.”_

_She stared blankly at the crushed green velvet interior of his bed hangings._

_She did not trust him._

_It did not matter._

_“Do you have any spare vials, or will I need to go back and get my own?”_

 

* * *

 


	7. VII

* * *

 

**_(December 3, 1997)_ **

 

“We have to get into Hogwarts,” she announces, unwinding her scarf and hurling it at the head of a nearby Ravenclaw. It sails right through the girl’s neck, floating down in a tired heap on the opposite side of the library table. “I’ve cross-referenced everything you’ve—that I know about Voldemort’s life, everything that Dumbledore told me, with historically pertinent events, with anything related to his—his _minions_ , or his family—and it all keeps coming back to Hogwarts.”

Tom sprawls out in his chair, lethargic and bored, balancing on the two back legs. “So? Go to Hogwarts, then. You aren’t a muggle, it’s not as if you can’t find it.”

She scowls at a nearby bookshelf. “No, I’m just a muggle- _born_ ,” she sneers, beginning to pace. She feels stranded, _trapped_ , caged, like her skin doesn’t quite fit around her bones. It is _loathsome_. “I’m being hunted, in case you’ve forgotten—I can’t go _anywhere_ without a disguise, or, or the Invisibility cloak—and Hogwarts is overrun with people who _want to kill me_ , preferably in as painful a manner as possible, so, no, Tom, I can’t just _go to bloody Hogwarts_!”

He tips his chair forward, landing upright with a thump. “It’s that bad?” he asks, disbelieving. “It’s bad enough that you— _you_ —are afraid?”

“I didn’t say I was _afraid_ ,” she says, bristling.

He snorts. “Didn’t you?”

She glares. “Excuse _you_ , Tom, but I haven’t had the _luxury_ of being afraid of _anything_ since I was fifteen,” she snaps. “I’ve been a bit preoccupied with keeping everyone I happen to love _alive_ , haven’t I?”

He flaps his hand at her—ambivalent, indifferent, _disdainful._ “You’ve never sounded more like a Gryffindor,” he replies, tone biting. “But please, Hermione, regale me with gripping tales of your endless sanctimony and sacrifice—it’s all so _terribly_ interesting.”

Her chest constricts around the swelling, burning weight of her rage—she is embarrassed and she is defensive and she is _losing control_ , she feels it, feels the itch of her fingers as they ache for the pressure of her wand, feels the simmering ignition of her magic as it pushes at her nerves, at her veins, at her blood. Because she hates him, _hates_ him, hates that he has not had to live the past three years as she has, hates that he does not _understand_ what it has felt like, what she has had to do and what she has had to lie about and what she can now acknowledge is her growing, inevitable dependence on _him_ —as her confidant, her anchor, her problem and her solution, both, her contradiction, her complication, her _mess_ —

“I know what you’re doing,” she finally says. “I know that you’re trying to— _provoke_ me into not—giving up. But I didn’t come here—to _you_ —for that.”

His lips part. “Oh?”

“I was never going to give up,” she continues. “I know that this isn’t an insurmountable obstacle— _Draco Malfoy_ got a horde of bloody Death Eaters into Hogwarts when Dumbledore was still alive, and if he can do it, so can I. That isn’t what I was upset about. Not really.”

He looks amused. “You came to me for…comfort, then?” he guesses, nonplussed.

She forces a smile. “Stupid, isn’t it?”

His eyes flash with something dangerous. “You’ve never been stupid, Hermione.”

 

* * *

 

_They decided to use the Marauder’s Map and the Invisibility cloak and the maze of underground tunnels beneath Hogsmeade to sneak into the castle._

_They planned for the first of January._

_On December twenty-ninth, Ron witnessed her disappear into the pages of Tom Riddle’s diary._

_On December thirtieth, she explained to Harry what the purpose of the Resurrection Stone was._

_On December thirty-first, Harry poured basilisk venom over Slytherin’s locket and Hufflepuff’s cup._

_Later, when she was alone, she held the unbreakable flask over the diary—droplets of venom were clinging to the groove of the rim, menacing and precarious and so, so close—but she could not—she could **not** —_

 

* * *

 

**_(December 31, 1997)_ **

 

She asks him to take her somewhere busy, and he brings her to Kings Cross on the morning of his last departure for Hogwarts. The bench they sit on is rigidly uncomfortable, plain slatted wood with cast-iron bolts.

“I gave you my virginity,” she says, fidgeting. “Did you know that?”

He shrugs. “Am I supposed to thank you?” he asks coolly.

She taps her fingers against her knees as she studies the bustling, smartly-dressed crowd. “I know that _you know_ that I know that you’re Voldemort,” she blurts out, trying again. “No—wait. That isn’t what I meant. I meant—I was going to destroy you earlier. With basilisk venom. I had it ready, and I was—”

“Why are you telling me this?” he interrupts, strangely still.

To their left, a train whistle shrieks, puffs of white-grey smoke flooding the station.

“You’re the lesser of several evils,” she replies after a second. “And I am—highly logical. _Dumbledore_ assumed that you—that Voldemort—had only gotten around to making the six horcruxes. The ring, the diary, the locket, the cup, the diadem, and the snake.” She leaves out Harry, the accident. “But what if he was wrong? What if, tomorrow, we manage to win, to end it all—and there’s actually more? What if there’s another way for him to return?”

He scratches at his chin. “You want to use me as a litmus test, do I have that right? If you can get me out of the diary successfully, you’ll know that I’m the last horcrux.”

She swallows. “Yes.”

His gaze is steady on a nearby pastry cart; the air smells like croissants and cinnamon.

“Oh, Hermione,” he sighs, clucking his tongue.

She levels her spine, wary. “What?”

He rolls his neck. “I know that _you know_ that knowledge is power,” he says slowly. “I know that _you know_ that sharing this with me isn’t wise. Isn’t _intelligent_. Which means that it is a lie or—a warning. Or—a threat? A reminder that—for now—you’re the one in control?”

She looks at him askance, wetting her lips. Something that had been tight and brutally nauseating quietly unfurls in her stomach—because he will never trust her, not like Harry does, not like Ron, and he will never suspect that her reliance on him is anything other than self-serving. He is incapable of it. The thought relaxes her.

“I know your secrets, Tom,” she teases, scooting closer on the bench. “Will you try to kill me for them? If I ever get you out of here?”

He blinks rapidly. “ _Try_ to?” he repeats, tone playful—and she should be alarmed, she knows, that he can adapt so quickly, transform himself so absolutely—but she is relieved, rather, glad for it, glad for _him_ , and she will not examine that, not now, not ever—

She draws her legs up, shifting to face him. “Yes, _try to_ ,” she insists. “But—when I stop being useful—what will you do, I wonder?”

He stares at her, expression illustrating shuttered surprise before turning curious. “I wonder, too,” he muses.

Her lips curl up.

He laces their fingers together.

It is enough, for now.

 

* * *

 

_The clock struck midnight._

_He laved kisses down her throat, moist and hot, hitched her knees around his backside and thrust forward once, twice—_

_“I was a virgin, too,” he confessed, hoarse and rough in a voice like gravel._

_She felt a languorous layer of sweat bead up between her breasts; he was fully pressed against her, body creating a cocoon of heat and a catalyst for the most torturous sort of friction—she could barely breathe, and it had never been like this, it had never felt so real and he had never felt so present and his teeth were nipping at her neck, her pulse point racketing a furious filthy crescendo as she drifted and spun and up up **yes** — _

_“Wait, what?” she said, faltering._

_“I—this version of me,” he hissed, eyes fluttering shut. “I was a virgin. I hadn’t ever...”_

_She arched her back, helpless._ _“Should I thank you, then?” she demanded._

_He huffed out a laugh, small and incredulous, **genuine** , and that was—_

_That was unacceptable._

_She locked her ankles together, squeezed her thighs around his waist, and flipped them over on the bed, sitting up straight as she regained her equilibrium, the change in the angle of penetration sparking something liquid and fierce in the pit of her abdomen._

_“Like this,” she said, clutching his upper arms, using him for leverage as she began to grind down._

_He bent his legs, planted his heels against the mattress—his pelvis slapped against her thighs as they moved together, the mechanics well-oiled and rhythmic and familiar even if she could not quite recognize the feelings behind them._

_“You are not allowed to die tomorrow,” he snarled, abrupt and aggressive—and then he reared up, knocking her flat on her back again, hips rocking piston-fast—she spread her legs wide, instinctive, **desperate** , and he held onto her ankles, hands big and graceful against the delicate arches of her feet. “I forbid it. I am not done with you.” _

_She dug her nails into the meat of his shoulders._ _“The—the diadem,” she replied, keening as he reached down and circled her clit with his thumb. “It’s—it’s in the Room of Requirement, isn’t it? Years ago—you—you showed me, you wanted me to—”_

_“Of course,” he said, gasping. “It’s—I would never have taken it out of Hogwarts, never, you were right about that—I’m going to—I’m close— **Hermione** —” _

_She twisted her fingers into the sheets, every last one of her cells and their atoms and their nuclei ablaze and alight and her heart was palpitating with such delicious ferocity that she felt as if it was melting, her muscles in ribbons and her lungs in shredded pink pieces and she was going to break, she was going to fall, she was going to disintegrate with alacrity and with **electricity** and she could not—she could **not** — _

_“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, yes, yes.”_

_He came with a shout._

_She was only a moment behind._

 

* * *

 

**_(January 1, 1998)_ **

 

They enter Hogwarts at dawn through the statue of the one-eyed witch in the empty third-floor corridor.

The atmosphere of the castle is stagnant, _thick_ , and there is an ominous chill to the rustling of the portrait voices and the hush of the wintry air.

Tom’s diary is heavy in her pocket.

He is either her secret weapon or her last resort—she is no longer certain.

 

* * *

 


	8. VIII

* * *

 

 

**_(7:55 am)_ **

 

The Room of Requirement is on fire.

Harry is lost, glasses foggy with soot and ash even as they reflect back brilliant orange and glaring red and hot, hot bitter sun yellow—he’s charging towards Draco Malfoy, trying in vain to summon a broomstick, and she is coughing, she is bleary-eyed and she is terrified and Ron is gone, her wand is in pieces, Ron is going after Harry, and the Fiendfyre is unresponsive and unpredictable and Crabbe is dead and Goyle is dead and she can _smell it_ , putrid and sizzling and she cannot _breathe_ and she cannot stop it, she does not know nearly enough Dark magic, not _nearly_ —

She fumbles for Tom’s diary.

She flips it open, wonders frantically, weighs and measures the consequences and whether or not she should act on her suspicion that he had _lied_ — _my return to humanity is conditional_ , he had said, but that does not make sense, that does not make _sense—_ and she is counting milliseconds now, she is counting fractured fractions of time and she is sentient of the raw scrape of smoke on her throat and the sound of Harry yelling at Malfoy and then a beam drops, a crackling crack of wood and displaced oxygen and they are going to _die_ , like Crabbe, like Goyle, they will be _incinerated_ and it does not matter that she is safe, it does not matter that she will live—

She touches the first page.

She lets herself _need_ , lets herself wish, finally succumbs to the desperation that she has always felt around Tom Riddle, the ache and the fear and the _want_ —

She has never wanted something so badly.

She has never felt so much or so deeply and everything from before just seems so _shallow_ in retrospect, seems fleeting and flighty and tenuous, all whims and quirks and _impulses_ that she was able to control, to manipulate, but this— _this_ —this is not that, this is so far removed and separate and isolated and she wants and she wants and she is not certain that it will work, is not certain that the tingling of magic beneath her skin is strong enough but she is steadfast and she is resolute and still, still she _wants_ —

_Intent and force of will are significant components of magic._

_Intent and force of will are significant components of magic._

_Intent and force of will—_

The diary begins to quiver ever so slightly, an early disconcerting tremor that feels like a precursor, a warning, to clashing tectonic plates and a craggy fault line and an earthquake of such enormous magnitude that she knows, she _knows_ , that the foundation of her life will never quite recover—

With a snap, the spine of the diary breaks in half; the pages fall apart—and it reminds her of a wide-open mouth, an unhinged jaw, locked and stuck and jammed in a scream—and the thread of the seam that winds through the binding unravels itself, flutters to the floor, coiling in a neat, pristine circle next to the toe of her sneaker—

She tightens her grip on the front cover.

The gold letters spelling out _Tom Marvolo Riddle_ glint beside the roar of the flames, getting closer, closer, and the air is blurry from the heat and she can no longer see Harry, or Ron, or Malfoy and she chokes, she chokes, she _wants_ —

She rears back, startled, as the diary turns hot, searing the inside of her palm.

Instinctively, she lets go.

She hears Harry shout out in pain—

She flinches, blinks furiously, feels the salty burn of unshed tears settle like a shield around the curve of her cornea—

And she wants and she wants and she _wants_ —

 

* * *

 

**_(8:20 am)_ **

 

The skin on the back of Tom’s hand is blistered and pink, flesh burned and fingernails singed; he had reached into the fire—not for her, not for her, not for her—and she does not know what that means.

“The blond one didn’t make it,” he says crisply, unapologetically, dusting off the lapel of his black, fitted jacket. He is staring at Harry, a peculiar, questioning tilt to his head. “I’m sorry—I know Hermione, of course, but do I know you?”

Harry is taken aback, plaid flannel shirt still smoking from the recently extinguished flames. He looks terribly young. “Er—no?” he replies, glancing at her in bewilderment.

She takes a decisive step forward, planting herself between them, and ignores the amused twitch of Tom’s lips. “We don’t have time for this. We have to kill the snake,” she says, gathering her hair into a loose, messy topknot. “Tom? Any ideas? You’re a Parseltongue, so I thought you could somehow lure it to us—it’s in the headmaster’s office, best as I can gather, and it’s Professor Snape’s job to guard it.”

She does not mention that her original plan had centered around Harry being a Parseltongue. Tom cannot know about that. Not yet.

“Is this Professor Snape…expendable?” Tom asks, desert-dry.

“Expend—who the bloody hell _are you_?” Ron exclaims. “Where did you come from? How do you know Hermione? How did you know how to put out fucking _Fiendfyre_?”

Tom appraises him with a slow, disdainful sneer. “My name is Tom Riddle,” he replies coolly, brows arched. “And I’d say it’s a pleasure, but Hermione seems adamant that we’re in a bit of a hurry—so, perhaps now is not the time?"

As if sensing danger, Ron goes quiet, surrendering to an irritating, sullen sort of silence that itches at the surface of her skin like a bad, annoying rash.

“Right,” she announces, scrunching up the sleeves of her faded maroon jumper. “Let’s go, then.”

 

* * *

 

**_(9:00 am)_ **

 

They run into one of the Carrows on the opposite end of the seventh floor. Tom casts a quick Imperius curse before the woman can so much as lift her wand—Ron narrows his eyes, but Harry’s shoulders slump forward with something that Hermione rather suspects is relief.

Tom’s magic is seamless and sharp as he directs Carrow to the gargoyle that guards the entrance to the Headmaster’s office.

“Blimey,” Ron mutters, frowning. “He’s—well, he’s almost _too good_ at all of this, isn’t he?”

Harry snorts. “Who cares? He’s on our side, obviously—plus, Hermione trusts him,” he says, shrugging. “That’s good enough for me.”

She grits her teeth.

Tom smirks as he motions for Harry to put on the Invisibility cloak. “You two should stay down here and keep watch. Hermione and I can handle this.”

 

* * *

 

**_(9:10 am)_ **

 

Severus Snape is a spy.

Severus Snape is a _hero_.

Severus Snape is dying, and it is all her fault.

“I switched them, Granger, _I switched them_ ,” he says.

 

* * *

 

**_(9:45 am)_ **

 

“What an impressive man,” Tom remarks, gaze pinned to the blank violet eyes of Voldemort’s snake. “To have lied like that, so successfully, for that many years—he must have been a master Legilimens.”

She understands what he isn’t saying, of course. He is astonished that his own talents were surpassed, _overcome_ , and if she knows him—and she does, she _does_ —he will be cataloguing the memories that Snape had given them, analyzing Snape’s technique and mannerisms with all the precision of an autopsy on a cadaver.

“Don’t tell Harry,” she says. “Not—Snape did all of this for Harry’s mother, and that’s a…sore spot, so to speak. Especially after Dumbledore—I’d just rather—he needs to focus. We can tell him after.”

“After you kill me, you mean?”

She picks up Snape’s wand, wincing at the admittedly remarkable frisson of energy coursing through the wood—she remembers that it is eight and three-quarter inches, rowan wood, has a Kelpie hair core, she _remembers_ , except that doesn’t seem right, not now that she’s holding it—and sidesteps the puddle of foaming basilisk venom that is weeping from the wound on the dead snake’s neck.

“Why would I kill you?” she asks carefully.

He chuckles. “You’re here to kill Voldemort, aren’t you?”

She flexes her fingers around the grip of Snape’s wand.

Her magic feels… _welcome_.

She does not answer.

 

* * *

 

**_(10:00 am)_ **

 

“He—he’s angry, Hermione, he’s _so angry_ —” Harry gasps, collapsing into a crouch and grabbing on to his ears with both hands. “ _Fuck—_ he knows we’re here, I think—yeah, I think he’s coming—”

Tom considers Harry with a frightfully thoughtful expression. “Of course,” he says, turning towards Hermione. He leans down, lips brushing her ear. “They’re connected. Clever, clever girl—is that why you wanted the Resurrection Stone? Because he has to die before I can?”

Ron is watching them, mouth set in a poisonous white line.

“Shut _up_ ,” she hisses, dragging Tom away from Harry and Ron and swatting at his chest. “Like you didn’t already _know_ it was for Harry—why’d you even save him, anyway? What did you get out of that? I expected you to put out the fire, not to—”

“Leverage,” he interrupts, voice low. “You’re a Gryffindor, Hermione. You like to play fair. You feel indebted to me, don’t you?”

“McGonagall’s coming,” Harry calls out weakly, brandishing the Marauder’s Map. “She’s just ‘round the corner. We need to tell her—”

“No,” she snaps, “I feel _confused_ that you took such an alarmingly uncharacteristic _risk_ for something as _intangible_ as _leverage_. You don’t care for my gratitude, so I want to know what you’re _doing_ , Tom.”

Tom licks his lips, tongue toying with the ridge of his teeth. He studies her intently before reaching out to cup her face, thumb tracing the thin, delicate skin beneath her eyes. “You said you loved him,” he says, puzzled. “You said he was the closest thing you have to a brother. You went to— _alarmingly uncharacteristic_ lengths to secure his safety.”

“— _is_ this bloke, Harry?” she hears Ron grumble. “Can you understand what they’re saying? He’s—why’s he touching her?”

“You saved him because I love him,” she repeats, incredulous. “Seriously? You can’t expect me to believe that.”

Tom presses a barely-there kiss to the crown of her cheek. “Like I said, Hermione,” he murmurs into her hair. “ _Leverage_.”

She freezes, almost imperceptibly.

And then she sighs.

“Okay,” she says in resignation. “Yeah. Leverage.”

 

* * *

 

**_(11:30 am)_ **

 

McGonagall and Flitwick engage the castle’s built-in defenses.

Harry holds on to the Resurrection Stone with a white-knuckled fist.

Ron scowls at Tom, distrust evident.

Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix all crowd into the dilapidated entrance hall, wands drawn, expressions tense, and Hermione is numb, Snape’s wand a bizarrely comforting presence in her right hand—and that makes her think, about Dumbledore and Malfoy and the night it had all gone wrong, in the astronomy tower—and Tom, Tom is pressed against her, body lithe and tall, warm and real—

“You realize I can’t be seen? By…Voldemort?” he asks, leaning into her.

“You can hide, if you like,” she replies, matter-of-fact. “But I’ll be very cross with you if you get yourself killed.”

He looks surprised. “Why?”

She scoffs. “Why did you lie about what needed to happen before you could come out of the diary?”

He visibly fights off a smile; his eyes are a dark, silky velvet brown, crinkling at the corners, and she is struck by the sudden, staggering realization that this moment is important. “He wants the Elder Wand,” he tells her softly. “ _I_ want the Elder Wand. All of this—the war, the death—it’s been for that, I promise you, and it’s quite clearly been a colossal failure.”

“The bridge is down!” Flitwick squeaks, voice magically amplified. “They’re here!”

“So I’m your second chance,” she muses.

He glances down at her. A thundering echo of footsteps resonates from the exterior grounds of the school.

“You’re _mine_ ,” he corrects.

She squeezes Snape’s wand. “Just so you know, if you try to hurt, maim, or kill anyone I love, I will destroy you,” she announces casually. “If you try to betray me or Harry today, in any capacity, I will make the final seconds of this version of your life so unimaginably agonizing that they will _transcend_ your subconscious—there will be no escape, nothing but pain and blood and _terror_. Do you understand?”

“You’ve been using me just as long as I’ve been using you,” he points out. “You’re not somehow morally superior to me anymore.”

“I’m not,” she agrees. “And that’s what I’m counting on.”

Outside, there is a thump and a riotous cheer as the front doors begin to splinter.

 

* * *

 

**_(1:45 pm)_ **

 

She watches Antonin Dolohov emerge from the Charms corridor, face scratched, wand aimed unwaveringly at the top of Ron’s back, right between his shoulder blades—

She does not even hesitate.

“ _Avada Kedavra_ ,” she says, easy and swift.

It doesn’t feel like she thought it would.

 

* * *

 

**_(2:40 pm)_ **

 

Bellatrix Lestrange catches her in an empty courtyard.

“If it isn’t the dirty, dirty mudblood,” Bellatrix coos, snatching Snape’s wand and tossing it to the side. “All by herself, poor dear—whatever shall I do with you?”

Tom is only a few minutes behind, Hermione knows, but _Harry_ , Harry is alone—

“I’ve always wondered,” Hermione replies, jerking her elbow backwards, hoping to hit Bellatrix in her abdomen; she misses. “Is the sadism a hereditary thing? Because I’ve met both of your sisters, and neither seem nearly as crazy as you—”

Bellatrix yanks at Hermione’s hair, spilling it out of its topknot—Hermione’s throat is then bared, veins pulsing powder blue and lavender, pretty pastels too thin, too vulnerable—

“Silly little mudblood,” Bellatrix simpers with a cackle, producing a wicked silver dagger. She drags the flat of it across Hermione’s clavicle, and the metal is frigid-cold and electric against her bones. “I know you’re the one who broke into my vault. I was hoping I would see you today—you deserve a bit of punishment, I think.”

She shoves Hermione to the ground.

“I used Polyjuice to get in,” Hermione taunts, breathless. She sees Snape’s wand lying several feet away. She needs to stall, she knows, she _knows_ — “How does that feel, Bellatrix? A mudblood wearing your skin, touching your things—”

Bellatrix’s nostrils flare as she kneels next to Hermione, knife sparkling in the afternoon sun. “Make as much noise as you need to, mudblood,” she spits, lifting up Hermione’s left arm. “This is going to hurt.”

Bellatrix fits the point of the blade against the inside of Hermione’s wrist and presses down.

The pain is extraordinary.

And Hermione screams and she screams and she screams and she thinks, wildly, that the knife must be cursed, somehow, must be infused with the Darkest magic to ever exist because this is _beyond_ anything she has ever known or thought about or imagined and she cannot understand how or why but it must stop she must stop it she must she _must_ —she flings out her other arm, fingers scrabbling over the moss-covered bricks, and her pinky hooks on to the edge of Snape’s wand and yes _yes_ she can stop this she can make it all go away—

“ _Diffindo!_ ” she manages to cry, rolling onto her stomach and glancing back. Blood is seeping into the fabric of Bellatrix’s dress.

“How dare you,” Bellatrix seethes. “Filthy, _disgusting_ , abomination of a creature—”

“Hermione? Hermione!” she hears Tom yell.

Hermione aims Snape’s wand at Bellatrix’s heart. “If you move, I will kill you,” she warns her.

Tom skids into the courtyard.

His eyes catch on the drops of blood oozing sluggishly from Hermione’s forearm.

His expression turns shuttered and frosty and _ferocious_ , and he approaches her and Bellatrix with slow, deliberate purpose.

And Bellatrix recognizes him.

“How—” she starts to screech, voice hoarse, cheeks gaunt, bodice torn down the middle to reveal the off-white ivory skeleton of her corset.

“Well, you don’t look very fun at all,” he says, flicking his wand and sealing her lips shut. His rage is palpable, and Hermione shivers. “Are you alright?” he demands, jaw clenched. “I heard you—scream. It was unpleasant.”

She stands up and peers around a half-decimated Grecian pillar. “I’m fine, mostly, but Harry just went into the forest,” she says, swallowing as she rubs at the cut on her arm. A crude letter ‘M’ has been carved into her skin. She thinks it will scar. “We should—I should—can you hurry up? Narcissa Malfoy’s behind him, and she’s not going to react well to Draco’s death.”

Tom transfigures a rundown sandstone brick into a knife that appears identical to the one that Bellatrix had been using. “I don’t know or particularly care who _Draco_ is, but this will only take a minute,” he replies, tone distant. He waves the knife at Bellatrix. “I’m not quite done with her.”

 

* * *

 

**_(3:05 pm)_ **

 

Tom trips over an exposed tree root when he sees Voldemort in the open clearing.

“That’s—really?” he whispers, mouth twisting with disappointment. “That’s me? That’s—Voldemort?”

She bends her knees and ducks behind a rotting, overlarge log. A line of medium-sized red ants marches across the peeling grey bark. “Be quiet,” she scolds him, clutching Snape’s wand. “I need to hear what they’re saying. You can have your identity crisis after we win.”

“Charming,” he drawls. “Truly.”

He flicks his fingers at a chunky black beetle; its shell is an opalescent emerald green, winking in the murky darkness of the forest.

 

* * *

 

**_(3:20 pm)_ **

 

“You murdered my most faithful companion,” Voldemort says, deceptively plaintive.

She tunes out Harry’s response.

It is immaterial.

“—already in possession of the Unbeatable Wand, you see,” Voldemort goes on. “Dear, departed Severus took it from that old fool of a headmaster, and I, in turn, took it from him. You cannot defeat me, Harry Potter. Your conquest is fruitless.”

 _I switched them, Granger, I switched them_ .

“—the fate of the Malfoy boy?” Voldemort is asking.

_The blond one didn’t make it._

She remembers Draco raising his own wand—ten inches, hawthorn wood and unicorn hair—and stripping Dumbledore of his—

_I switched them, Granger, I switched them._

_The blond one didn’t make it._

Narcissa Malfoy releases a heart-wrenching wail.

Snape’s wand is feather-light in Hermione’s grasp.

 

* * *

 

**_(3:30 pm)_ **

 

Voldemort kills Harry.

Hermione reaches for Tom’s hand.

She waits.

She waits.

Narcissa Malfoy sniffs miserably as she checks to see if Harry is alive.

Her eyes widen.

“Come on, Harry,” Hermione mutters, biting her lip. “ _Please_.”

“My Lord—” Narcissa says urgently.

Everything happens at once.

“ _Stupefy!_ ” Tom bellows, darting into the clearing just as Harry wakes up.

Voldemort spins around, confused. “What is—”

He sees Tom.

His already chalk-white face goes ashen.

“ _Avada Kedavra!_ ” Harry shouts.

 

* * *

 

_Voldemort was dead._

_Harry was alive._

_The Resurrection Stone had worked._

_Voldemort’s wand, Tom confirmed, was ten inches long, made of hawthorn wood with a unicorn hair core._

_It was not the Elder Wand._

_“Dumbledore never had it,” she lied, thinking of the burnt-out husk of the Room of Requirement. “If Grindelwald was, in fact, its master at one point—it has to still be on the Continent.”_

_Tom nodded shortly._ _“I should find it,” he suggested, wrapping a proprietary arm around her waist as they wander through the Hogwarts ruins. “As far as magical artifacts go, it is…priceless.”_

_She hummed, noncommittal._ _“You probably shouldn’t be left alone, though,” she replied. “No telling what you could get up to.”_

_He barked out a laugh._ _“You’re just as dangerous as I am, Hermione—I’d hazard that it goes both ways.”_

_She paused—_

_And then smiled grimly._

_“You’re right, of course,” she said._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several things were implied but not explicitly stated in this chapter—Severus Snape gave the Elder Wand to Draco Malfoy for safekeeping. The Elder Wand was destroyed when Draco died in the fire. Hermione spent most of the chapter thinking she had taken the Wand from Snape, and then resolved to never tell Tom that he was going to spend his life searching for something that no longer exists.


	9. IX

* * *

 

_Months passed._

_The four of them became impossibly famous. There were interviews and headlines, exposés and biographies—her relationship with Tom was splashed across the tabloids, a permanent fixture on Page Six of the **Daily Prophet** , and by April, the general consensus was that it was all beautifully, tragically romantic—star-crossed lovers, separated by time and space, by blood prejudice and that ghastly war and the evil machinations of an undead madman— _

_Tom was charismatic._

_Tom was photogenic._

_Tom was a natural leader, articulate and well-spoken, and she watched—entranced and disgusted and fascinated, so incredibly fascinated—as he spun their story to the media, deftly leaving questions about the diary, about his origins, unanswered and unaddressed._

_And so she pasted on a grin and accepted reparations from the Ministry and learned how to blush enticingly, innocently, whenever Tom kissed her in public._

_“We’re finishing school,” she told him at lunch one day in June. Through the single-paned glass of the restaurant window, the blinding flash of a camera highlighted the arch of her cheekbones. “It will look suspicious if we don’t—we can’t just leave in the middle of all of this attention, everyone will wonder why.”_

_He twirled a highly-polished silver butter knife around and around with his fingertips._ _“Fine,” he conceded, sounding flippant and bored. “It might be better to take the time to establish some connections outside of Potter and Weasley, anyway. Do you think they’ll re-Sort me? There aren’t really any positive connotations with Slytherin now, and I dislike the idea of you being so far away.”_

_She speared a cherry tomato with her fork; the skin ruptured, scattering green-tinged orange seeds around the rim of her salad bowl._ _“I don’t know if the Sorting Hat even survived,” she replied, dabbing at her mouth with a starched linen napkin, lipstick leaving coral pink stains. “The rebuilding is going well, but Professor McGonagall hasn’t been very forthcoming about what’s been lost.”_

_He glanced at the horde of photographers milling around outside—he then leaned over the small bistro table and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. A honey-brown strand caught on the pointed platinum backing of her diamond stud earrings._

_“Come on, darling,” he murmured quietly, so only she could hear. “Look alive. We may not be in love, but I really don’t think that matters much to you anymore, does it?”_

_Her eyelashes felt heavy with mascara as she blinked._ _“Lots of things were lost in the war,” she confirmed, meeting his gaze. “It would be counterproductive to list them all.”_

_He smirked._

_She took a bite of iceberg lettuce, and the crunch of it between her teeth echoed and echoed and echoed around her skull._

 

* * *

 

**_(July 21, 1999)_ **

 

“I’m beginning to suspect that the rumors about Grindelwald having the Wand were entirely fabricated,” Tom complains, collapsing into a beige wicker deck chair and squinting at the sun.

She adjusts the front of her burgundy bikini top as she sits up, setting aside the fragile, snakeskin-bound potions manual she had collected from the Sardinian archives earlier that morning. “Why do you say that?” she asks, stretching her arms above her head and staring out at the twinkling teal waters of the Mediterranean.

He groans before peeling off his shirt—a sky blue Lacoste polo, already damp with sweat. An immaculately manicured line of wiry black hair trails below his navel, stopping at the slouching waistband of his khaki shorts. He is not wearing a belt.

“Well, I confirmed he was here between 1942 and 1943,” he replies, frustrated. “His magical signature is all over that allegedly abandoned villa in Oristano. But beyond that…just the usual—dungeons, a ransacked library, a rather baffling assortment of silk handkerchiefs—”

“He could’ve transfigured it,” she interrupts, upending a bottle of coconut-infused tanning oil onto her palm. “Or hidden it. We know he liked traps—trick walls, carnivorous plants, all that—and it might be worth looking into any oddities—things that don’t match. The handkerchiefs, for example, might be…something. A code, perhaps. Remember Istanbul? With the peacocks—and the mosaic tiles?”

He considers her for a long moment, mouth open and wet and a vivid cherry-red. She rubs the oil onto her upper arms, her elbows, goes all the way to her wrists; she glosses over the waxy, barely-visible outline of the letter ‘M’—scars didn’t tan, after all.

“Let me do that,” he says abruptly, slipping into the vacant spot behind her on the lounge chair, swinging his legs to either side so that he can fit his body around hers like a puzzle piece.

She feels him pull at the strings of her top, feels the Lycra graze the tips of her breasts before tumbling off. “ _Tom_ ,” she says, curling her toes and relaxing against his chest. His skin is warm from the sun, _creamy_ , and his shoulders are broad, _strong_ , and his hands—his _hands_ —are big and graceful, _beautiful_ , dwarfing the curve of her waist as he skims them down, up, languid along her hips and her stomach and then grazing the heel of his palm against the front of her bikini bottom just so—

“You’ll come with me tomorrow,” he says, tongue darting out to toy with the shell of her ear. “You’re better with patterns—if there’s anything there, you’ll see it.”

Her legs fall open. “Yes,” she replies, pulse quickening, fast, faster, double and triple and quadruple-time—“Of course. What—what kind of silk were the handkerchiefs? Jacquard? Crepe? Charmeuse?”

He smiles into her neck, thumb creeping underneath the edge of her bathing suit. “You always know exactly what I need, Hermione,” he whispers, shifting his pelvis so that the hard line of his cock is pressed against her bare lower back. “How is that? How are you so…” The lean muscles of his abdomen bunch up as he hitches her right leg over the bend in his elbow, spreading her thighs wide.

“How am I so—what?” she asks, swallowing.

He teases his fingernail along the swollen nub of her clit—and her gut clenches, spine turning liquid and skin so unbearably sensitive that the cool sea breeze tingles and jolts as it caresses every pore and every follicle and she cannot wait she cannot _wait_ —

“I have never cared so little if I was being lied to,” he says, voice soft.

His breath is hot against her throat.

 

* * *

 

_Ironically, it was Ron who never quite trusted Tom Riddle; Harry adored him, had not been able to make the connection between Tom’s reappearance and Voldemort’s subsequent demise._

_“He makes you happy,” Harry told her at Christmas the year she turned twenty-two, cheeks rosy from the pint of brandy that had been added to the eggnog. “Well—maybe not that, exactly, but he makes you…something. Calm. Focused. Like you don’t have anything to worry about. It’s nice, after…everything. I’m—I’m glad you have him.”_

_Before she could think to formulate a response, someone had pushed him laughingly towards the mistletoe with Ginny._

_Because there was loathing, and there was love, and she wanted neither—she **had** neither._

_Tom was always going to be something in between: a riddle, a threat, a constant._

_She would not let him go._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos/comments are always appreciated.
> 
> [also, come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com).


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